Thoughts on Onboard Sound and Network

[NorCalBoarder]

I just got my shiny new Asus P4S533 board yesterday and am quite excited about the prospects.

I am wondering whether to use the onboard ethernet or use my own network card. Does anyone have know
if the ethernet is like AC97 and will slow down my computer? Does anyone know if it performs as well as
an average ethernet card? etc.

I am also wondering about the onboard cmedia sound chip. I am, of course, looking for the highly touted (by Asus)
optional S/PDIF interface module. I am convinced it does not exist, however.

Any advice you guys have would be invaluable at this point. I have looked all over asusboards and can't
find anything that speaks to this issue. Thanks in advance.

 

[Peter]

The SiS chipset integrated LAN engine is your average PCI LAN chip pulled into the chipset. No extra CPU load over a PCI solution using the same chip (SiS 900), and in SiS chipset architecture, zero PCI traffic while on the LAN.

The C-Media 8738 sound device is the best of the cheap solutions, highly regarded even by professional musicians for its digital signal handling. What the analog in/out quality is like very much depends on how much effort the mainboard designer put into the analog side.

regards, Peter

 

[Peter]

AC97 btw is just an interconnect bus, between sound engine and sound codec. It says NOTHING about how CPU loading the sound engine is.

Sentences like "AC97 sound is a CPU hog" are bullshit. SoundBlaster Audigy connects its sound engine to the codecs through AC97 in the exact same way as the Intel 8x0 chipset integrated sound does. The difference is in how much of its own brain the sound engine has, not in how the codecs are connected to it.

regards, Peter